Sarah Michelle Gellar, who has surprised other moviemakers with her $40 million striking success of The Grudge, now has to challenge another horror flick Saw

After debut at No.1 Gellar’s Grudge awaits Saw

Sarah Michelle Gellar’s horror movie The Grudge has scooped $40 million box-office receipts in the Northern America, performing the third-biggest October opening ever, behind Scary Movie 3 ($48.1 million) and Shark Tale ($47.6 million). Details can be found in yesterday's article Moviegoers vote in Gellar, hold `Grunde` against `Surviving` Afleck.

This Columbia Pictures project was directed by Takashi Shimizu, who made a remake of his own earlier film Ju-On. The Gellar made its first appearance on Friday-Sunday.

"If we would have done twenty million dollars, we would have been ecstatic," said Rory Bruer, president of domestic distribution at the Sony-owned studio.

This weekend The Grudge will get some competition with another new horror flick, Saw, featuring Danny Glover. This movie deals with a psychopathic genius known as Jigsaw because of the unusual calling card he leaves victims. The plot was thought up by Whannell and Wan, who first made the amateur film about Jigsaw by themselves and sent it to Hollywood. Within three months producer Greg Hoffman let Wan direct Saw and Whannell star as mysterious photographer and Jigsaw victim Adam, reported Dailytrojan.com.

Nevertheless, The Grudge has its glory now, beating the animated Shark Tale, the top movie for three straight weekends, which finally slipped to the second place with $14.3 million, lifting its total to $136.9 million.

At the same time Affleck featuring in Surviving Christmas comedy has become No. 7 winning just $4.5 million. These results seem to be extremely weak if compare them with Affleck’s striking win in poker. He took home $365,400 at California State poker Championship, leaving behind 90 skilful poker professionals.

‘Surviving’ Affleck now appeared as a lonely guy who hires a pretend family for the holidays. His new image didn’t attract large audience, but some experts believe, he has chances to do so lately.

The other top movies are Shall We Dance, a romantic comedy  starring Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez and Susan Sarandon ($8.6 million); Friday Night Lights ($7 million) directed by Billy Bob Thornton. They were followed by  Team America: World Police ($6.6 million), which opened less than three weeks ahead of the US presidential election and had generated enormous controversy for its irreverent portrayal of the US war on terror. Then was Ladder (49, $5.4 million), overtaking Taxi, The Forgotten and I Heart Huckabees.